Making some tough decisions about our old man today. Mel turned 18 this month. In recent years he has "shrunk" as most aging cats seem to do. He was never a large cat; in his prime he was around 9 lbs. Up until a few months ago he was maintaining a farely steady weight of about 7 lbs. In April he started drastically losing weight, and went down to about 5.3 lbs. We got him on a new special diet plus steroids and vitamin B12 shots and he gained back to almost 7 lbs. In the last couple of weeks he has started dropping weight again. He's back down to 5.3 lbs.
Conversations with the vet have left three options. Right now, he's pretty sure that Mel has pancreatitis with associated IBD, and we had been treating Mel accordingly.
A biopsy (under anesthesia) to check for cancer in his intestines...which, if found, could be put into remission but probably not cured with intense chemo. We ruled that one out, not because of expense but because of quality of life. He's at risk for the anesthesia, and the chemo protocol is tough on younger cats, let alone a geriatric cat like Mel.
Do a blood test for a disease called pancreatic insufficiency and adjust Mel's meds if it shows as positive.
Add a drug to his current regimen that specifically targets the IBD...which takes 6-8 weeks to start showing results.
We've decided to go with the blood test. If it's negative then we will boost the IBD meds. I'm mostly processing my thoughts here.
TL, DR - Mel is slipping away and he has been a part of our lives for over sixteen years. It's not easy watching this happen.
